Vietnam Orders Social Media Companies to Provide User Identities

Foreign social media platforms with an average of 100,000 or more visits a month must abide by the new rules, according to a new decree issued Nov. 9. It goes into effect Dec. 25. Foreign companies providing cross-border information services to Vietnam will have 90 days to comply, Dan Tri news website reported.

Unlike China, Vietnam doesn’t block websites such as Facebook. Vietnam’s one-party government, though, jails citizens who disseminate what is viewed as anti-state or anti-party content. The government in 2017 said it was deploying a 10,000-member military cyber warfare unit to combat wrongful views proliferating on the internet. In 2022, a decree required foreign tech companies to store user data in the Southeast Asian country.

Vietnam isn’t alone in ramping up cyber regulations. Governments in Southeast Asia are increasingly looking for ways to regulate or control the use of social media, which can sway public opinion on politically sensitive issues.

The Vietnam decree directs foreign social media companies to verify users accounts with their local phone numbers or official identification cards for those without Vietnamese phone numbers. Only verified users are to be allowed to share content, comments and live-stream on social media, according to the decree.

Foreign social media companies must store information about their Vietnam users — full names, birth dates and phone numbers — and provide them to authorities if directed to do so, it said. Companies are ordered to submit annual reports on their services in Vietnam to the government. Content or apps deemed illegal must be pulled down within 24 hours of being flagged by authorities. The companies also are ordered to temporarily block accounts and pages from Vietnam accused of publishing illegal content with certain frequency for seven to 30 days.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has been pushing for more measures to tighten restrictions on what it considers toxic and anti-state information spreading on social media.

Vietnam had 72.7 million social media users as of January this year, equivalent to 73.3% of the country’s population, according to a report complied by Kepios Pte. Ltd.